From: XING Columbus
COTA Public Hearing Roundup
June 24, 2008 by Eric
I was one of about 20 interested citizens at tonight’s COTA public hearing convened by Councilwoman O’Shaughnessy (Transportation Committee Chair) and Councilwoman Tavares. I’ll summarize my “minutes” of the meeting below, but the overall message I got was:
1) COTA is a “prudent, cautious, and measured” organization. Probably to a fault.
2) COTA is on sound financial footing for the first time in a decade, and is implementing it’s long range plan. This plan consists of increasing the bus hours on the streets.
3) COTA is struggling with high fuel prices, Bill Lhota believes they’ll go higher over the long term, but doesn’t have a concrete plan on how to deal with them.
4) COTA is still luke warm about the streetcar plan, so long as they have a significant seat in the design, implementation, and a good plan regarding future phases of a multi-modal system.
5) Google Transit will be up and running for Columbus on July 3rd.
The notes I took, and random thoughts I had, are below…